A secure element (embedded or removable) is usually hosting a single Operating System (or OS) offering access to generic and specific services customized according to requirements from at least one image owner. So, it may be a SIM (or UICC) card or a smart card or a chip card or else an integrated circuit card, for instance.
In the following description it will be considered that an image owner is a commercial entity that has purchased an image from an image maker, an image maker is an entity that has built an image, and an image is a structured and encrypted representation of binary information stored in the memory of a secure element and embedding means for decrypting encapsulated data, managing rights and checking integrity of loaded decrypted data.
As known by the man skilled in the art, on top of the operating system of a secure element one may define memory domains containing applications and supported by the OS services.
In order an OS of a secure element supports a single image of an image owner, it has only to support a single set of requirements defined by (or for) this image owner. But, when a secure element of a hardware host must act as several virtual secure elements for several image owners, its OS may be incapable of supporting all the requirements of the sets defined by (or for) these image owners.